


A Chance at Striking Lucky

by violentdarlings



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom - Susan Kay
Genre: Alternate Universe - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Fusion, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, chocolate sewer goblin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 22:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18583945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: The Phantom chocolate factory has been outside town for as long as Christine can remember.





	A Chance at Striking Lucky

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I dipped my toe into these particular waters, but there's so much good E/C fic on here I just couldn't resist.
> 
> Titled paraphrased from - you guessed it - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The tickets were announced on a Thursday afternoon, around 3pm. Christine Daaé (who was once Christine de Chagny) will remember that later, after everything changes, because she was on the train on the way to get Sophie from school, and she'd just got on the 2.56pm when the kid sitting across from her had gone wild. The shabby radio in his lap had proclaimed the news, and Christine had felt a combination of amusement and confusion, as well as more than a little trepidation.

The Phantom chocolate factory had been outside town as long as Christine could remember back, which admittedly wasn't particularly long. She'd moved here six years ago; Sophie had been four and starting kindergarten, and Christine had gotten a job within two weeks of moving to town. The local newspaper, of all places. She had finished her journalism degree back home, of course, but shortly after graduating had fallen pregnant and, well, Raoul had earned enough for the both of them. Not any more, of course. Moving had been an opportunity for change, for a new and better life for her and Sophie. A life away from the awful things that had happened back home, from Raoul’s disapproving parents and Christine’s old friends whose kindness had felt more like condescension.

Christine writes the agony aunt column and occasionally gets to report on something none of the senior staff want to cover, like the school fete and the doings of the local mayor. Nothing high profile ever falls into her lap and she is deeply grateful it doesn’t. Once she had longed for fame and renown, but all that had changed when the obstetrician had handed a tiny, red-faced bundle to her and said, _this is your daughter._

Christine earns enough to pay the rent and not much else. She manages Sophie’s school fees and balances the budget every fortnight with a vinegary expression that she knows is giving her lines around her mouth. Raoul’s girl bride is long since gone. Christine is on the wrong side of thirty and has a child who sees monsters in every shadow but wants more than anything to win a Golden Ticket. And Christine can’t give it to her.

So they are poor. So Christine hasn’t had a new winter coat for five years and Sophie has six Beanie Babies instead of sixty. The coat is perfectly serviceable and six is better than none at all, "like some of those poor children in Africa, baby, they don't have any food, let alone Beanie Babies!" Christine’s ten year old had sighed and nodded, and that had worried Christine more than if her daughter had shouted instead. Sophie is solemn and serious, with Raoul's intensely drawn features and Gustave Daae's wide, vulnerable eyes, and an imagination full of faeries and dragons and fantasy worlds that Christine, for all the love in her heart, cannot follow Sophie into.

Christine knows Sophie is getting teased at school, and feels both furious and impotent in regards to her ability to do anything about it. Christine remembers the sensations of childhood, being thin and small and young and feeling like the world was crumbling every time someone glared in your direction. And she knows the strength of maternal love as she never did then, motherless thing that she was; she would kill and die for Sophie, smite and avenge. Yet she cannot make other children be kind to her baby, her baby who is so different from any other child Christine has ever known.

They are walking home from the park on the day that everything changes. Christine is hanging back a little as Sophie stares eagerly through the heavy black gates that separate the chocolate factory from the rest of the world. All that can be seen is a vast grey building rather like a squatting toad. Yet Sophie peers into the dimness of fading sunset as though viewing the greatest adventure known to man.

(A shadow, treading the perimeter of his property as is his wont, stops to listen to the bright little voice chattering into the night. Something like a smile makes its way over his concealed face, before he recalls what he is, how the child would scream at the sight of him, and the smile fades.)

“What do you think it’s like inside?” Sophie asks her mother. Christine does not know the answer, but she knows what Sophie wants to hear.

“A chocolate river,” she replies. “Candy trees and peppermint grass.” Sophie drinks in the words, looking very much like Raoul for a moment, and Christine’s heart clenches in her chest. She steps forward, kneels down, and peers into the darkness. This is the thing that her daughter loves most. Well, this, and –

“Sing, Mama,” Sophie says, and Christine is powerless to resist those pleading eyes. She had been a good singer, back when she was in school. But her father’s death had quieted her voice for many years; only the birth of her child had awoken the deepness of feeling required to sing once more. Christine perches on a nearby low wall, and pulls Sophie up to sit by her side.

_I tell myself you don’t mean a thing, and what we got, got no hold on me, but when you’re not there, I just crumble…_

Christine’s voice dies away, the song finished, and she happily absorbs the blissful look on Sophie’s face.

(There is another blissful soul close by, but Christine will not learn that for some time.)

“Do you think I might win a Golden Ticket, Mama?” Sophie asks, and Christine sighs, but she makes sure her daughter doesn’t see.

“I have every confidence you will,” she tells Sophie seriously, and is rewarded by an easing in the taut lines of Sophie’s shoulders. Christine sets her daughter on the ground and smiles down involuntarily at the tiny face, tucking Sophie’s scarf more firmly around her throat before clasping Sophie’s hand. “Let’s go home, angel.”

(Christine does not see the shadowy figure hidden behind the vast wall, standing stunned and wordless in the wake of the voice he’d heard. That voice, _that voice_ , the shadow repeats to himself, shattered to his very centre, and it is a long time before he is able to move at all.)

 

The day after everything changes, the first child finds a Golden Ticket. His name, Christine learns over breakfast from the radio in the kitchen, is Thomas Irwin, and he is twelve. Christine cannot miss the way Sophie sags in her seat and refuses to finish her cereal, any more than she can escape the jubilation at the newspaper over this new choice opportunity to sell papers. To cheer Sophie up Christine takes her straight to the park after school, watching her baby climb to the top of the playground and pretend she is sailing a pirate ship.

“Excuse me.” Christine turns, shivering a little in the fierce wind, as a stranger sits down beside her on the park bench. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Of course not,” Christine replies, even as she eyes the stranger. A scarf is wrapped around his face, showing only a slit for his eyes, and his hat is pulled down low. Rather odd, Christine thinks, before mentally shrugging. It is a bit nippy out, after all.

“Your daughter?” asks the stranger, nodding to Sophie as she shouts at invisible deckhands and tugs on an imaginary sail. Christine smiles.

“Yes,” she replies. In the city she had grown up in, this interaction would have been unusual, perhaps even threatening. But Christine is accustomed to the oddities of the locals around here by now.

The stranger looks as if he is about to say something more, but it is at that moment that the first fat raindrops begin to fall from the sky. Christine curses, prompting an incredulous glance from the scarfed man to which she pays no heed. “Sophie!” she calls, and belatedly realises she may have offended her companion. “I’m sorry,” she apologises. “But we’re walking home. Better get going before the rain gets worse.” She hesitates a moment. “It was nice to meet you,” she says, before she hoists Sophie’s schoolbag onto her shoulder and tucks her daughter’s hand into her own.

Over the coming days, she does not give the stranger a second thought.

(The shadow’s heart is thumping and his palms are sweaty; he had spoken to her. And she had been exquisite. She had _cursed_ , like a normal woman instead of a goddess; her beautiful child had smiled guilelessly up at him. She is ravishingly human, so different to the fiend the shadow knows himself to be. He remembers every feverish moment of seeing her as he drives back to his factory, and when he steps out into the pouring rain, not even the soaking he receives can dampen his mood. After all, the same rain is falling on _her_.)

Christine is surprised to learn she is familiar with the second child to win a Ticket. Her name is Aria Guidicelli and Christine had known her mother at university; Carlotta, now a famous opera singer. Christine hears from another mother at Sophie’s school that Carlotta had bought her daughter box upon box of Phantom chocolates, to better her child’s chances of winning. Christine envisages those boxes, and then the sad little bar she buys Sophie twice a week as a treat. Christine does not mind being poor for her own sake but, oh, to give Soph everything she deserves.

Christine broaches the subject tentatively with her daughter over dinner. The TV in the lounge is blaring a news show about the second Ticket winner. Mother and daughter are sitting side by side on the floor, companionably sharing a pizza, when Christine speaks. “I am sorry I cannot buy you more chocolates,” she says, and the words feel woefully inadequate, so little when Christine is truly apologising for not being able to give Sophie _everything_. Yet Christine is astounded by her daughter’s reaction. Sophie sets down the novel she’d been reading as she ate and looks her mother in the eye.

“If you bought one less a week, you could buy a magazine instead, and then we’d both be happy,” she replies, and picks up her books again. Christine is stunned motionless for a moment, before she leans over and hugs her daughter fiercely. “Mum!” Sophie protests, and a sting goes through Christine’s heart that has nothing to do with their lack of money. Only last week had her daughter come easily into her arms like the smallest of children. Mum has replaced Mama, in the way that things often change; without notice or remark, only to be comprehended after the fact. Christine does not want her baby to grow up, but she does not wish for Sophie to be left behind, either. Yet Sophie still comes to her mother for a kiss goodnight and to be tucked into bed. Christine clings to these moments fiercely, this time when her baby is still young enough to need her.

The third Golden Ticket is won, and then the fourth. Christine does not pay attention to the names, for all the lucky children are featured on TV and every newspaper within a hundred kilometres. She only notices Sophie’s sadness when she does not win, even as Christine silently thanks God. Is it not easier, she wonders, for Sophie to never see the prosaic truth no doubt lying within that factory? Disheartened workers, silver machines and assembly lines. The truth would drive the happy fantasy from her daughter entirely, Christine is sure.

(The shadow is going about his plans carefully. He has thought better of his earlier plan of attempting to become acquainted with the woman by traditional means. He is, after all, not a traditional creature, not even a man, really. He executes his plot with mechanical precision and a sharp certainty born of supreme confidence in the rightness of his actions. His employees marvel at the single-mindedness of his focus, his tentative steps towards a world outside the factory he has made his haven. Yet others see the desperation beginning to grow within him, and they are afraid.)

On the last day where everything is ordinary (but this is not true, although Christine does not know it; the extraordinariness has been hiding from her sight, keeping her in the dark) Christine and Sophie go to the corner shop to purchase their magazine and chocolate bar. It has become something of a ritual; five weeks have now passed since the announcement of the Golden Tickets, two weeks since the last one was discovered. Christine will pick up one of whatever trashy gossip magazine looks juiciest. That is the easy part.

Sophie, on the other hand, will take up to half an hour to decide. Standing in front of the selection of chocolates, she considers each package and each flavour. Music of the Night, a dark chocolate studded with fruit and nuts; Dream Descend, rich milk chocolate with swirls of white. Fantasy Unwind, Abandon Thought, and of course, classic Phantom, pure milk chocolate. It is this one Sophie most often selects, although she has tried them all. Christine leans against the counter and makes small talk with the cashier while Sophie paces back and forwards and finally, with the gravitas of a judge declaring a sentence, lifts a bar of Phantom and places it on the counter. “This one, please,” she says gravely, and Christine fights back a smile.

Christine will be making dinner when it happens. There is a piercing scream from Sophie’s bedroom and Christine reacts before thinking. She races up the stairs of their shabby townhouse three at a time and runs into Sophie’s bedroom. “What is it?” she asks frantically, rushing to her daughter’s side. Sophie is sitting on her bed, tears falling down her cheeks, her half opened chocolate bar in her hands. At her mother’s touch on her shoulder Sophie looks up, her eyes like stars, and something both sinks and rises in Christine’s chest.

“Mum,” Sophie says, and pulls the chocolate bar open a little more to reveal a glimmer of gilded paper inside. “Mum. I won.”

(The shadow does not yet know his plans have worked. He will not know for some time, even as he watches the news voraciously for word. He will not have calculated for the woman’s natural reserve, or the child’s happiness being so complete that she does not require validation from her peers. He will find out only when he overhears two of Sophie’s fellow students talking about it at the supermarket, while the shadow lurks in the background and dourly considers cage versus free range eggs.)

(He buys free range. There is enough cruelty in the world without him paying more money towards it.)

The Ticket contains instructions and dutifully, on the shortest day of the year, Christine and Sophie waiting by the factory gates. Rain is pouring down and there are reporters and cameras and cars everywhere. Christine pulls her insufficient coat a little further around her to her as Sophie huddles close under the sheltering cover of the umbrella. It is almost nine o clock.

Christine studies the other children with something like interest. It would be interest, if she were not quite so cold and quite so dreading watching the horrible fall of Sophie’s face when she realises there is no chocolate river. No candy trees and peppermint grass.

The first boy, Thomas, is quiet and well-behaved. He stands there with his mother and father, obviously very wealthy people, if Christine is any judge of designer heels. And she used to be, once. By contrast the other three are little monsters. Aria Guidecelli is the worst, Christine thinks with a hint of vicious amusement. The child wears an outfit both outlandish and expensive and blatantly unsuited to the winter weather. It pleases Christine, in a small and petty way, to see that Carlotta has not aged well. The Botticelli beauty the other woman had once possessed is already starting to fade. Still, Christine contemplates, that’s what a life of vodka, cigarettes and quick love affairs will do to you.

“Good morning,” says a strong, deep voice, and Christine turns with everyone else to look at the gates. They are propped open just a little, and a man stands in front of them, as if guarding the entrance to his realm. Christine is tempted to rub her eyes to see if she is hallucinating. The man wears a suit, so beautifully cut she knows it must have cost a small fortune. But that is not the most remarkable part about him. He wears a white mask, a twin for the small one that appears on every bar of Phantom chocolate. Christine cannot decide if it is an affectation or nor. “Will the children who found the Golden Tickets please step forward.”

Christine can feel Sophie trembling beside her, but the girl goes up to the man without a word. Sophie and the other children line up in front of the man, whose eyes glint through the mask appraisingly.

“Well, then,” he says, and holds out his hand imperiously. “I will require my Tickets back, if you please.” Christine watches as each child puts the scrap of shining paper into the man’s hand. “Thank you,” he says, when Sophie, the last of the line, has put her precious Ticket back into his hands. “I am the Phantom, and this is my chocolate factory. Welcome, to all of you.” The only sound to be heard is the chirp of a nearby bird and the low whistle of the wind; Christine thinks some of the assembled might not even be breathing. The presence of the Phantom is such that only when he looks away from the gaggle of adults to examine the children does Christine feel as though she can move again.

“One parent of each child may come with them into my factory,” the Phantom pronounces. Christine sighs. Unsurprisingly, Carlotta is first, followed by the wealthy father of young Thomas Irwin. Christine drags her heels. She does not want to go into this metal building. She does not wish to see the light of possibility die in her child’s eyes.

(She does not see the way the shadow can barely keep his eyes from straying to her. But we must not refer to him as the shadow anymore. After all, he is the Phantom now.)

“Follow me,” the Phantom says curtly, and Christine takes Sophie’s hand as they enter the factory.

They enter through the front door to find themselves in a richly carpeted foyer, and the Phantom takes his leave for a moment. Christine takes a step back to watch what the children do. Sophie beelines for a statue in the corner, Aria Guideceli (and her mother) run an unimpressed finger over the marble fireplace. The other two children (Felix Firmin and Alice Andre, Christine recalls dimly) are held in place by their weary looking parents. And Thomas Irwin sits on a bench and waits quietly as his snobbish father grumbles to anyone who will listen about having to miss a day of work ‘for this tosh’, as he puts it.

“Follow me,” the Phantom says, appearing as if from nowhere out of a corner, and opens a door that is only now visible against the grain of the wood panelling on the walls. Christine grips Sophie’s hand and follows him. This Phantom does not seem to be a fellow of many words.

Christine is the last in the group to go through the door, and so she is the last to see what awaits them. True to what she had expected, the main factory floor is dominated by silver machines and gleaming benchtops. Yet Christine cannot bring herself to be disappointed. For in one corner of the room is a sight that seems to be taken directly from Sophie’s imagination. It is not a large area; perhaps only twenty feet by twenty feet. Yet it is enough.

There is not so much a chocolate river as a chocolate stream. The candy leaves in the trees are quite clearly stuck on with icing to carefully crafted marzipan branches. And the peppermint grass is very sparse. Yet Sophie regards the small garden of candy delights with a wild delight that stops the breath in Christine’s throat.

“Go on, children,” the Phantom says, and Sophie does not need to be told twice. She runs over to the candy wonderland, her hands hovering over everything, too afraid to touch. But her eyes are alight with a joy that Christine has not seen for six years, since Raoul had driven off to work one morning and a semitrailer had turned his car into just so much twisted metal.

Raoul had been the one to read to Sophie every night. They had been halfway through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the fourth time when Raoul had died. And Christine had lost her other half. Although that is not quite true, after all. She had loved Raoul, in the way one loves something that is familiar and easy. They had been together all through university; the night of their graduation, he had proposed, and Christine had said yes. Why not? Why not, indeed, when there had been a secret blooming beneath her breastbone, new life inside her like a seed in the earth.

All that is left now of Raoul is Sophie. Sophie, with her heart as big as the sun and her mind ever in daydreams of other worlds. Sophie, who has found herself in a scene from her fantasies. Sophie. It is always Sophie, and it always will be Sophie, for Christine. She does not know yet there is anything else, but it is coming.

“Look, Mama!” Sophie calls gleefully, recalling her mother to the present, the girl for a moment forgetting she thinks herself too grownup now to call her mother by the childhood moniker. Christine waves back at her daughter. “Like in the book!”

“Like in the book,” Christine calls back, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, and using her sleeve to mop at the tears on her cheeks. If only Raoul could be here.

“I am glad she likes it,” rumbles a deep voice to Christine’s left. She jumps a little, but it is only the chocolatier, the mysterious Phantom. Christine barely manages to hide her embarrassment at being caught sobbing like a fool, but her sleeve is already soaked. Without another word the Phantom presents her with a spotless handkerchief. Christine stares at it a moment – who still uses handkerchiefs these days? – but accepts it nevertheless. It would feel like a scene from a film, if Christine was the type to indulge in such things.

“Thank you,” she replies, and blows her nose discreetly. “I’ll, um. I’ll wash it and get it back to you.” The Phantom inclines his head.

“Very well,” he says, and something twigs in Christine at that voice.

“Have we met before?” she asks impulsively, catching the tall man by the elbow. The Phantom freezes. She cannot know yet that it has been forever since someone _from outside_ has touched him. She cannot know yet that sparks seem to go from her fingers all the way through his body. Not yet. But she will.

“I think I would remember that,” the Phantom replies quietly, and Christine relaxes her grip on his arm, although her hand does not fall away. She is looking around her at the small marvel he has put together. Even the reserved Thomas is now breaking off leaves with a shy Sophie, whose smile is yet to dim.

“This place is beautiful,” Christine says with sincerity, eyes on the wonder before her. Her hand is still on the Phantom’s arm; she thinks nothing of it, but the Phantom cannot think of anything else. As Christine watches her daughter run joyously over to the candy trees, she misses the way the chocolatier jerks in shock, staring in bemused confusion down at his arm. When she withdraws her hand, still captivated by the wonderland below, he is still standing as if one frozen, as much a part of the scenery as the teacup flowers or the marzipan trees.

“It is,” the Phantom replies softly. (But he is not talking about the scene from fairyland he has put together for one child alone. One child, with dark eyes and golden hair and a smile as sweet as spun sugar. He refers to something far deeper and more precious.)

“Come,” Christine hears him order some half an hour later, when the children are sticky and sated. “Onto the next phase of our tour.” Somehow Christine finds herself next to the tall man, Sophie’s hand tacky in her own.

“What now?” Christine wonders aloud, and she sees the Phantom turn his head just a little so one eye can peer at her. “Do you have Oompa Loompas hiding somewhere?” Christine asks teasingly. Behind his mask, the Phantom frowns, but she cannot see that.

(The Phantom, however, is seeing enough for the both of them. He has glanced down just for a moment, a flicker of light catching his eye. And so this is the first time that he sees, on the ring finger of Christine’s left hand, a gold wedding band, and his heart falls to his knees.)

"Not exactly," he snaps curtly, and steps away from her, leaving Christine wondering what she did to offend him. "Follow me, ladies and gentleman, this way..."

(He thinks she is mocking him. It will be a long time before he learns humour can be gentle as well as cruel.)

By two o clock that afternoon, Christine’s head is spinning. They have been taken through the whole factory, Sophie’s eyes just as wide at the science as at the magic. But through it all the Phantom has kept his distance. It upsets Christine to think she has offended him somehow, but in the same breath thinks herself an idiot for even conceiving of the notion that she is any way noteworthy to the masked chocolatier.

(She is wrong. She is very important to the Phantom. She has not offended him, not truly. He is simply afraid that if he gets too close to her, he will not be able to control himself. Sometime around ten o clock she sheds her winter coat and the _sight_ of her, the curves of her exquisitely feminine body strikes something into the heart of him he cannot name.

He ends the tour in the experimental lab, but there is one more thing. He cannot show people around the factory without introducing the staff that run it like clockwork for him, for all his staff are nearly as bizarre as he is. And of all the things he has done today, this is the part he is the least comfortable with. His factory is a refuge for people who do not fit in as much as it is a business. Yet he presses a button on the wall and speaks into the intercom; his voice reverberates around the entire factory. “All staff to the experimental lab, please.”

Nadir is first. Nadir is tall and strong and also wanted for murder and treason in his own country, although he is the best man the Phantom has ever met. Nadir is the public face of Phantom Enterprises. He makes deals and attends board meetings, all the things the Phantom himself cannot do. Could do, perhaps, if he was not so afraid.

Daniel is next. Daniel is the most capable administrator the Phantom has ever met and is three foot ten. The Phantom dreads the day that Daniel will decide to join a Fortune 500 company and the Phantom will be adrift in a sea of paperwork as he was before Daniel had come to work in the company.

Danae, a six foot four transgender woman who heads up HR. Renee, who had been a top food science student before the nervous breakdown that left her with crippling social anxiety; she is now his head of day to day operations. And Jeanette, whose ability to contort her body as well as amazing engineering skills makes her the ideal individual for all those awkwardly located fix it jobs.

The Phantom watches Christine the whole time his staff filter into the lab. This is the true test of the woman whose voice haunts his very dreams.

She is polite and perfect, and he thinks he might be in love.)

The Phantom walks the group back through the factory to the foyer. Christine is towing an unwilling Sophie, who decidedly does not want to leave. “Mum!” she is whining, tugging on her mother’s hand. “Just another few minutes.”

“No, Sophie,” Christine replies sternly. “I’m sure Mr Phantom has things to be getting on with.”

(‘Mr Phantom’ briefly thinks of the things he’d like to be ‘getting on with’ with Christine, and shudders.)

“But Mum!”

“Sophie Marguerite Daaé de Chagny!” Christine snaps, and it is enough to quiet Sophie immediately. Christine glances forward to the tall man leading the group of children and their parents. Christine is meanly pleased to see Carlotta fluttering around the Phantom, and him failing to pay even a single scrap of attention to her.

“What about our year’s supply of chocolate?” Felix Firmin whines. Christine had almost forgot about that. The Phantom cocks his masked head as though the boy is speaking a foreign language.

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Outside the factory there are five large boxes with each child’s name on it. Christine blinks in the winter sunshine, so different to the industrial lighting of the factory floor and the muted lamplight of the foyer.

“Goodbye,” the Phantom says, and that seems to be it. One by the one the families disperse until only Christine and Sophie is left standing by one last box and the tall man unbothered by the rain gently falling.

“I meant to ask you,” Christine says, pulling her coat back on. “Why did you do this?” The Phantom looks down at her, and Christine would be lying if there was not something about him that drew her in.

“Do what?” he asks, and Christine likes his voice, too.

“The Golden Tickets. Taking the kids around the factory. Going by the security you’ve got around here you obviously like your privacy, so why would you do this?” For a moment Christine fears she’s crossed a line when the Phantom doesn’t reply.

“Sales went up four hundred percent during the Golden Ticket period,” he says finally. “I’ve committed to give nearly all of the profits of that time to charity.” Christine smiles at him, warmed through, but her smile dies when he looks away quickly. (Because the sight of her with that light in her eyes is enough to put all sorts of wild ideas in his head.)

“That’s wonderful,” she replies. “You’re wonderful, Monsieur.” Christine curses inwardly, but the Phantom’s eyebrow is raised behind his mask.

“You are French?” he asks lightly. Christine shrugs.

“We lived there for a time. Father and I are from Sweden, originally. And Mother,” she adds belatedly. The Phantom leans down and puts a hand on her arm, so struck that for a moment her forgets how he loathes physical contact.

“You are Gustave Daaé’s daughter?” the Phantom asks. “I did not know he had children.” Christine closes her eyes briefly.

“He has nothing, now,” she says. “He died fifteen years ago.” The Phantom nods.

“I heard of his passing,” he says. “He was a superb violinist.” Christine nods, and finds herself crying for the second time today. She fumbles for the handkerchief, thrust deep into a pocket and forgotten. “I did not mean to upset you,” the Phantom says, clearly distressed, and Christine manages a smile, patting him lightly on the arm as she wipes her eyes.

“You didn’t,” Christine says. “And what you did for the kids, that was amazing. Really, it was,” she says more forcefully, when the Phantom shakes his head. “Some lucky girl is very fortunate to have you.”

The Phantom starts to laugh, a harsh unhappy noise. “I’m not… I don’t have… I’m single,” he tells her. (‘Single’, he thinks in black amusement. What an ordinary word.)

“That’s a shame,” Christine says, and the Phantom eyes her warily. “I’m sure you’d make someone very happy.”

And together with her daughter, Christine walks out of the Phantom’s life.

 

At least, for about ten seconds.

“Hey!” the Phantom hears the voice call back to him and turns automatically. Christine is jogging back to him, her hair in disarray and Sophie waiting by his gates. “I was wondering,” she says breathlessly. “If you’re not doing anything later. Would you like to have dinner with Sophie and me?”

The Phantom looks around for a moment. “You mean me,” he says, and cringes inside. Christine shrugs.

“I don’t see anyone else around here,” she replies. “Look. Here’s my address. I’ll be cooking dinner around six.” She hands him a crumpled piece of paper, the ink fresh and already running a little in the rain. “You’re very welcome to come.”

The Phantom walks back to his office in a daze, only to find his Managing Director and head of administration waiting in the office. Nadir takes one look at him, starts to grin, and summons the others. Within ten minutes, Jeanette is seated on the floor tinkering with a small machine, Danae is perched on Nadir’s desk, and Renee comes wandering in last, bringing a small selection of experimental fudge from the lab. The Phantom explains the situation, stumbling over his words as he very rarely does with his staff, and glares at Daniel and Jeanette when they start smirking.

“Of course you’re going,” Nadir says briskly. Erik switches his glare to his best friend.

“She’s pretty,” Danae adds. “And decent. You could do a lot worse.”

“She’s married!” the Phantom points out helplessly. “I saw the ring!”

“That means nothing,” Nadir says.

“And what if she gets curious?” the Phantom snaps. “What if she thinks, oh, let’s see what he really looks like?” Daniel looks up from a pile of paperwork.

“Not everyone is like Luciana,” he says mildly. The Phantom feels himself flush under the mask.

“I regret telling any of you about that,” he growls.

“You were very drunk,” Jeanette reminds him. Nadir clears his throat, bringing the attention back to him.

“You’re going,” he says firmly. “It’ll do you good to get out of the factory for a while. And if it goes poorly, you never have to see her again. Now go and change your suit.”

Thus, the Phantom finds himself on Christine Daaé’s doorstep around five to six. In one hand he holds a bottle of wine and in the other a bar of chocolate for Sophie. Not that she needs it, with the vast box he’d provided, but Christine’s face lights up when she opens the door and sees him there. “Mr Phantom!” she exclaims, ushering him inside, taking his heavy winter coat from him.

“Erik,” he replies, and it’s been so long since he used his true name, with someone who is not his employees. “I’m Erik.”

“Erik, then,” she says. “Come in.”

Christine’s house is small and cramped and it feels like a home. Erik looks around at the ragged sofa with the bright throw rug, the chipped kitchen table and the narrow staircase that leads up to what’s presumably the bedrooms. And then back at the kitchen table, where three places have been carefully set. Three places. Christine, Sophie, and him. Where was her husband?

Erik freezes. He’d been so pleased to be invited, he’d completely forgotten how he’s supposed to eat in his mask. “Sophie!” Christine calls, while Erik starts to shake. “Dinner!”

Sophie appears down the stairs, a book tucked into her side. “Hello, Mr Phantom,” she says, as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world for the proprietor of Phantom chocolates to be in her kitchen / dining room.

“Hello, Sophie,” Erik manages. “This is for you.” He hands the bar to the little girl, whose eyes light up.

“Thank you, Mr Phantom,” the child replies, and sets it down carefully with her book on the sofa. “What’s for dinner, Mum?”

“Pasta, _mitt barn_ ,” Christine says, setting the plates down on the table. Erik, surprised, turns to look at her.

“You still speak Swedish?” Christine smiles.

“ _Lite_ ,” she admits. “A little. I grew up there, before we moved to Paris.” Hesitantly, Erik settles into the free chair at the table, eyeing the steaming plate in front of him with trepidation. But it is not as difficult as he had feared. It is a simple matter to manoeuvre the fork up under his mask to his mouth. The wine, however, that Christine had poured poses a more difficult challenge.

Erik does not realise he has spent over a minute staring at the innocuous glass of wine before a small hand taps him on the elbow. Startled, he looks up, to see Sophie’s dark eyes peering at him. Wordlessly, the girl hands him a SpongeBob curly straw, and returns to her place at the table.

Erik smiles, and drinks his wine.

 

After dinner, Erik rolls up his sleeves, dons bright yellow gloves, and washes the dishes while Sophie gravely dries. Christine had protested. “You’re a guest!” she had said.

“Nonsense,” he’d said, running the water in the sink. “You cooked, we clean. Isn’t that right, Sophia?”

“He’s right, Mum,” Sophie had agreed.

So Christine makes two cups of tea and one mug of hot chocolate, and settles on the sofa in the living room to wait. Alone in the kitchen with Sophie, Erik scrubs a plate and hands it to the girl.

“You like Mum,” she says, apropos of nothing, and Erik almost snaps a wineglass in two. He looks down at Sophie in shock, and the girl smiles. Erik is not to know this, but that mischievous grin is all Raoul de Chagny, the only thing left of him in this world, other than his bones. “Don’t worry,” Sophie says, and plucks the wineglass from Erik’s fingers. “I won’t tell her.”

“Are you two coming?” Christine shouts from the living room, and Erik removes his yellow gloves with an air of dignity. He offers his elbow to Sophie.

“Mademoiselle?” he asks, and Sophie giggles, and reaches up to lay her hand on his arm.

In the living room, Christine hands Sophie’s book to her, and the girl curls up next to her mother on the sofa. Erik eyes them, and then settles in the battered armchair. “What are you reading?” he asks. Sophie holds up the fourth Harry Potter book.

“Mum and I are reading it together,” Sophie replies. She offers it to him. “Would you like to?” she asks. Erik flushes underneath his mask.

“I couldn’t,” he says.

“Please,” Sophie says. Erik looks at Christine for assistance, but there is no help from that quarter. (Because Christine has a fondness for the chocolatier’s accented, eloquent voice, and Erik cannot resist Sophie’s pleading eyes.) He takes a sip of his tea thoughtfully as Sophie passes him the book.

“ _Chapter Six: The Portkey,”_ Erik begins. _“Harry felt as though he had barely lain down to sleep in Ron’s room when he was being shaken awake by Mrs. Weasley…”_

He reads four chapters before Sophie starts to yawn. Christine cuts him off when he begins the fifth chapter. “Chocolate factories aside, you have school in the morning. Time to go back to the real world, my dearest.” Sophie sighs, but doesn’t argue. “Come on,” Christine says, and leads her daughter upstairs. Before she goes, though, Sophie comes over and shakes Erik’s hand solemnly.

“Thank you for a wonderful day, Mr Phantom,” the girl says.

“Thank you for dinner, Sophie,” he replies.

He is left alone in the living room, and he takes the opportunity to examine the room around him. Everywhere there are fragments of Christine and Sophie’s life together. Sophie’s schoolbag by the wall, Christine’s coat tossed carelessly over the charmingly archaic hatstand, the photos amassed in the large photo frame on the wall. Erik strides over to look. There is a worn, tired Christine in a hospital gown, holding a tiny, red-faced baby in her arms. For all her exhaustion, there is a light in her eyes and a smile on her lips. She is looking down at baby Sophie like she is holding the world in her arms.

There is an unexpected tightness in Erik’s throat. He swallows, and looks away. The next is no better. Christine, tucked under the arm of a tall, grinning man with Sophie’s nose and chin and golden hair. Christine is smiling too, her dress white and her veil tipped back over her dark curls.

“Raoul and I were so young then,” Christine says, coming up beside him. Erik almost jumps. He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. “You can’t tell, but I was four months pregnant with Sophie. Of course, his parents knew. That’s why his mother has that vinegary expression around her mouth.” Erik looks, but can’t see said woman. “Oh, no,” Christine says with a smile. “She’s not up in the frame. You think I want her looking down on me every time I watch TV?”

Erik chuckles. “I wouldn’t know about vicious in-laws,” he informs Christine. She grins.

“You’re well shot of it,” she replies. Erik looks at her sidelong.

“You don’t see your ex-husband anymore?” he asks. Christine stiffens, and Erik cringes. But before he can apologise, Christine starts to speak

“Actually, he died,” she replies. “He was in a car accident, six years ago.” Erik, stricken, cannot think of a word to say. Christine pats him on the arm. “You don’t need to say anything,” she assures him. “You didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik says helplessly. “That must have been dreadful.” He curses himself for the mindless platitudes, his thoughtless foolishness, but Christine doesn’t seem to mind.

“It was, rather,” she says, and sits back down on the sofa. She pats the cushion beside her, and Erik sits down. “If you want,” Christine says, not looking at Erik at all, “You could come back on Monday. For dinner, again. If you like.”

Erik’s heart is fit to beat straight through his chest, but he tries to keep his voice level. “That might be nice,” he says in as normal a tone as he can manage, and on the sofa Christine’s hand brushes his, just a little.

 

Erik gets back to the factory around eleven, feeling as if he is walking on air. He’d walked home in the darkness of the night, for once so elated he did not even stick to the shadows as he usually would. No, he’d come home through the broad streets, beneath the streetlights, his hat pulled down over his mask but a glint of white porcelain still showing around the chin. Out of habit he slips in the side entrance, goes into the office of the factory. There is no one there, as is to be expected. He is the only one to keep rooms at the factory; all of his employees have homes of their own. He is the only one to sleep here, surrounded by the work of years, the steadiness and security of the vast building around him.

In the lonely bedroom near the top of the factory, on the highest floor in the little jut of architecture Nadir likes to sarcastically refer to as ‘the tower’, Erik digs through a cardboard box of little used possessions, and for the first time in years takes out his violin.

 

On Monday, Erik raps on Christine’s front door and tries to curb the impatience surging through him. He’d spent the four days between seeing Christine and Sophie as a man possessed, burying himself in work to try and avoid thinking about that cosy little house, its two inhabitants, and the evening he’d spent with them.

Sophie opens the door, and it is not deluding himself, to see how her little face lights up at the sight of him. “Hi!” she greets him, and the dainty little handshake of the time before is forgotten; she throws her arms around his middle in an enthusiastic bear hug. Stunned, Erik looks down at her for a moment before gingerly patting her on the shoulders. Sophie pulls back and runs back into the house before he has time to either blink or follow. “Mum! Mr Phantom’s here!”

Erik follows her into the kitchen. Christine is there, pulling steaming naan bread out of the microwave. “Monsieur _le Fantôme_ ,” she says distractedly, “Hey. Sit down. Mind setting the table for me, Soph?”

Erik eats the butter chicken and rice placed in front of him, tears his naan bread into tiny pieces and forks them delicately into his mouth. The SpongeBob straw has been laid beside his plate once more, although there is iced tea this week rather than wine. After dinner, he and Sophie once again ignore Christine’s protests and wash the dishes. Sophie tells him about school and Erik hears a certain note of misery in her voice, one than he remembers all too well from being the ugly boy in school no one wanted to befriend.

“The other kids don’t like me,” Sophie confides, so matter of fact that it makes Erik’s heart hurt for her.

“Why?” he inquires gently, focussing his gaze on the glass he’s washing.

“I’m different, ‘cause I don’t have a dad, and we’re poor,” the girl replies, and Erik sneaks a glance down at her. “Mum came to Dad’s day at school in a moustache last year, but it wasn’t the same.”

Erik fights down the urge to smile, and looks around at the cramped kitchen, with its ancient appliances and mismatching chairs on the table. Looks around, and sees Sophie’s drawings pinned up on the refrigerator, the cork-board collage of Christine and her daughter in Santa hats, beaming; a haphazardly knitted scarf in pink, red and green strewn over a chair.

“You are rich in other ways, Sophia, _petite guerrière_ ,” he tells her, and she looks up at him. There is almost nothing he can discern from her expression, her guileless brown eyes. “I am sorry you lost your father.”

It should be against the law, he thinks, or against the unwritten rules of the universe, at least, for a little girl to smile so sadly.

For a wild moment, he almost thinks he hears, “I’m sorry you’re lost, too.”

Christine is dozing in her chair, but her eyes snap open when they come back into the room. “What have you got there?” Christine asks her daughter, who is carrying Erik’s violin.

“Mr Phantom is going to play for us!” Sophie pronounces brightly, as though she’d never been sad a day in her life, although Erik knows better.

 Christine raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?” she asks. Erik takes his violin case from Sophie’s little hands.

“Yes. I thought – of course, only if it is all right with you, Christine –”

“by all means,” she says, and Erik can almost see her steel herself for mediocre music, to have to feign pleasure at the end.

Erik grins. This he knows he’s good at.

By the end, he’s standing before the crackling fire, breathless, as always, from the strength of the music moving through him. it takes a moment to come back to himself; it’s been so long since he played for an audience.

When he turns around, Sophie is wide-eyed, with shock or with awe, he can’t tell which. Erik swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. He’d forgotten, how could he have forgotten, that his music doesn’t always affect all people the same. Because Sophie is staring at him like he’s a stranger, and Christine? Christine is weeping.

“Wow,” Sophie says softly, still goggling at him like she’s never seen him before. “Did Grandfather play like that?” Christine makes a noise like a sob, and for a moment Erik thinks he has ruined everything.

“Your grand-père had quite a way with the violin, my darling,” Christine says softly into her daughter’s hair as Sophie climbs onto her lap. “But even he could not hold a candle to Monsieur _le Fantôme.”_

Erik’s cheeks are burning from the praise. “You know, you really can call me Erik,” he mutters.

Sophie claps.

 

Once again, he’s waiting awkwardly in the living room as Christine tucks Sophie in for the night. He’d received another hug himself when the girl had said good night, and he’d managed to pat her on the head without feeling like a complete dunce. When Christine reappears, Erik can’t help but feel there’s something different about her; her hair seems smoother, and has she changed her shirt?

She comes to stand beside him, holding her hands out to the fire to warm them. Erik shifts on his feet, uncomfortable. She’s barely a foot away from him, and she smells like wildflowers, and even next to the fire he can feel the heat her body throws off. Woman. The nearest thing he knows to God.

“Busy day?” he asks inanely. God, she must think he’s a clot.

“Busy as any,” Christine replies. She flicks him a look out of the corner of her eye. “It’s funny,” she murmurs, so quiet he almost has to strain to hear. “I feel as if I’ve known you for ages.”

“I feel as if I’ve known you all my life,” Erik replies without thinking, and cringes internally. Way to play it cool, Phantom. But Christine only smiles.

“And when you have a connection with someone…” She traces a finger around the rim of her wineglass; Erik can’t help but watch, mesmerised. “You have to grab it with both hands.” She looks up at him from under her lashes. “Don’t you think?”

Erik’s not sure he remembers how to think. “Yes,” he agrees. “No. Yes?”

Christine laughs. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” Ah, at last. Familiar ground.

“Not at all,” Erik confesses. Christine sets her glass down on the mantlepiece.

“I’ll make it easy, then,” she says, and was she always so close? “It was good of you, to make that garden for the kids in the factory. Your friends say you’re a kind man. And I’ve been thinking about what you said, about giving the proceeds of the Tickets to charity.”

“Yes?” Erik asks warily. He doesn’t understand this. Good of him? he’s been called many things, but never good.

Christine is flushed and warm, her arm brushing his gently. Erik can’t bring himself to move away. “That was really sweet of you,” she replies, and leans up to kiss him.

 

Erik has never been kissed before. He had reached twenty, thirty and then forty without ever touching his lips to someone else’s, without a tender hand smoothing over his mangled brow. He hadn’t bothered to think much on it in years. As a teenager he had agonised over his ugliness, formed hopeless crushes on girls who never so much gave him the time of day. As a man he agonised no less over his looks, but had thought the days of painful love were behind him. At least, until he met Christine.

Her mouth is soft, her lips full, and she seems to know what she is doing, and praise God she does because Erik has no clue. She kisses him gently, her mouth closed, one hand on the collar of his shirt and the other on the back of his head, both far away enough from the mask that he is able to unbend the rictus of his fear-locked frame, a little. Ah, the mask. It is no small feat to kiss through it, or rather around it, the damnable thing pushed up a little so that he cannot see particularly well but at least he can kiss her, kiss Christine, in the candlelit dimness of the home he so wishes was his.

He thinks he might just be getting the hang of it when she opens her mouth and twines her tongue around his own. And what was a marvellous and sweet experience turns into something that grips him all the way through, waking up parts of him that he had long considered dormant, if not dead entirely. Erik _wants_.

He cradles her in his arms, an instinctive movement that even his years of inexperience have not bred out of him. Christine winds her arms around him and presses her lips to his jaw, just below where his mask ends, where his pulse hammers beneath his skin. Erik trembles so hard he can almost feel his teeth rattling. “Christine,” he murmurs, feeling like a rat caught in a trap, like a denizen of hell transported to an unexpected paradise. “I don’t think you…”

“I’ve been alone for so long,” she says, her words tickling his ear, cutting off his protests. “I think you have, too.”

“You’re not wrong,” Erik replies before his brain can catch up with his mouth. It’s hard to think, with her touching him, her hands spread over his shoulder blades, pressing his body into hers. “But you. You’re so…”

“I’m here,” she assures him. “I want this.”

“I’m ugly,” Erik tells her, and removes her hands from where they’ve slid round to fist in his shirtfront. “Don’t argue,” he adds when she opens her mouth, his hands loosely wrapped around her wrists. “I don’t mean unfortunate. I mean that once you see me, you will not want this. I don’t wear this mask as an advertising gimmick.” Erik watches her brow crinkle, her eyebrows furrow.

“I did wonder that,” she admits, and Erik shrinks a little into himself. She must feel him withdraw under her hands, because she moves her hands until she is holding his in her own. “Erik, it doesn’t matter,” she says. “Really, it doesn’t.”

“It does to me,” Erik insists. “I have lured you into this under false pretences. I am not like other men, or other… humans. I am different.” Christine is smiling.

“You mean, you feel at odds with the rest of the world?” she asks. “Like there is no one place that you fit? That everyone else has their lives sorted out to their satisfaction, and you are the only one that feels this way?”

Erik nods fervently, relieved she understands. “Yes. Yes. That is exactly it. That is why –” He breaks off midsentence. Christine is laughing.

“My dear, dear man,” she says, her words a little garbled through her mirth. “That is exactly how everyone on this earth feels. Welcome to the human race.”

And this time, when she leans up to kiss him, wrapping her arms around him tight, Erik does not pull away.


End file.
